


Shelved

by not_whelmed_yet



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Podfic Available, caring too much about fiction, i wrote this to vent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: in which I project so hard onto mtmte that I need the characters from the series to process my feelings about the book ending for meaka: Rewind can’t figure out why he has so many feelings about his favorite television show being canceled.





	Shelved

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry guys, this isn't my best work, I just needed to process the fact that LL is going to end and was struggling to do so. As you might expect from a person who's written more than 100K words of fanfiction about a series in under a year, I've hyperfixated a bit on this series and I'm having a hard time with the idea of saying goodbye. Especially with the idea of losing out on the only thing I've ever read where every character could be canonically assumed to be gay until proven otherwise - I've never felt as welcomed by a piece of fiction a I've felt with mtmte/ll. If you're here maybe that's true for you too.
> 
> Named after the Mountain Goats song [Shelved](https://open.spotify.com/track/3ImifXwRr0kej9hlD67O3q) bc the chorus is so apropos for this moment:  
> The ride's over  
> I know  
> But I'm not ready to go
> 
> Anyway, this is a mostly unedited rant where Rewind can’t figure out why he has so many feelings about his favorite ~~comic~~ television show being canceled.

A knock at the door startled Rung and he nearly dropped his puzzle. He wasn't expecting any patients for another...he consulted his internal chrono and realized he'd been so engaged with his project that it'd slipped into walk-in hours without him noticing. Not that he ever turned people away, but he liked to make an open invitation so more reluctant visitors could work up the momentum to come to his office. Hence, walk-in hours.

When he got the door open he had a half second of confusion before he looked down and found Rewind just below eye level.

Rewind looked terribly awkward, the sort of fidgety where he was probably going to make some excuse and run away rather than admit he'd come to talk to Rung. _Rewind._ Rung had been expecting to get Rewind in his office for months - the poor mech had lost his conjunx and his ship, borne terrible isolation, found himself in a quantum paradox where a duplicate of himself had died, picked up memories from a horrible dystopia and murdered Megatron while time traveling. Given all that, anyone would have needed someone to talk to. But Rewind had never taken him up on his invitations or any of their friends' repeated hints. If he was here now...it had to be something important. Rung couldn't lose him this time.

"Rewind, what a wonderful surprise," Rung said. "I've been working on this puzzlebox Skids picked up for me at the Cosmic Carnival and I need a second set of eyes."

He waved Rewind in and Rewind followed him, arms crossed awkwardly over his chest. "I know this is your...open therapy time," Rewind said. "I just wanted to - if any actual patients come by, I can leave."

"They probably won't," Rung said. "Third shift open hours are usually quiet. See, this puzzle, you're supposed to be able to get the rings out from under the wire spirals, but I can't figure out how to make it go."

Rewind poked at the puzzle for a few minutes, his posture loosening up as he did. Eventually, he got one of the rings out the maze, dropping it into the goal area with a satisfying plink. Rung resisted the urge to clap in response when Rewind turned to him with serious optics. "Rung, I came here to talk to you about something."

"That's what I'm here for," Rung said.

"It's something stupid," Rewind said, climbing up into one of the chairs. "I don't need to be therapy-ed over it. I just couldn't think of anyone else who wouldn't tell me how stupid I was being for being upset about it."

"I would never do that," Rung said, putting one of his hands over Rewind's where they were clenched on the table.

Rewind nodded. "I know. You're a good friend," he said. "Oh, Primus, this is so stupid. They've canceled _Found Family : Extraterrestrial Adventures._ "

Rung frowned. "I'm afraid I don't know what that is."

Rewind sighed. "Nobody knows what it is. It's a vid program about a crew of space adventurers from Cybertron...it's not really important what it's about. But they cancelled the _Extraterrestrial Adventures_ program to focus on the original cast and I didn't realize I cared about it so much." He hid his face in his hands. "And now I sound like a sparkling, getting worked up over a vid show. I shouldn't have said anything."

"I don't know anything about the show, but I think if you explained more I could understand," Rung promised. "Clearly it matters to you a great deal - do you know why you're so invested?"

Rewind reached out for the puzzle and pulled it over to his side of the table and started fiddling with the pieces again. "I couldn't sleep. After you all found me. I know I should have told you or Ratchet, but I already felt helpless. I didn't want to be someone who needed help. So I asked Swerve if he had any suggestions for things to watch, and he suggested it. I was pretty hesitant - I'd heard of the Found Family series and they're kinda...they're pretty cheesy. They're not exactly intellectual entertainment. But he promised I'd love it and I just...I fell into it. Sometimes the real world is awful and you need to submerge yourself in something else. You know?"

"Stories can be incredibly important," Rung agreed. "I've always loved romances, you know. Terrible, terrible romances with larger than life characters and impossible perfect endings. It's just a relief. And if you opened yourself up at a time when you were feeling more vulnerable, it makes sense that your feelings for this show are more intense."

"It's not just that," Rewind said. "I wouldn't have fallen for just _anything_.”

"What made this special?" Rung asked.

"It was so good, it was so complicated, every character felt real and - slag, that's not the reason. It's the cast for Extraterrestrial Adventures. All of them were former disposables. All twelve of them. And now that they're cancelling - I know that's never going to happen again."

"I can't say I can think of anything I've read that was entirely about former disposables," Rung said.

"We're not a big demographic group. And we do show up, sometimes. But the people that do the writing, they aren’t disposables, they never get it right. It's all about the trauma and the drama and it always feels like they're only there to be rescued or cried over. But not in Extraterrestrial Adventures. They were _all_ former disposables. And the writers weren't, but, I don't know, they must have had friends who were. Because it never felt forced or fake, they just _were_."

"You don't have any crewmates on the Lost Light who lived through what you did," Rung observed.

"It's not that I want to talk about that. It's just...the idea of people like me, being friends. Being happy. Never having to explain or justify their lives because everyone around them has lived through the same things. Primus, it's a stupid utopian fantasy. But I'm going to miss it so much."

"It's not stupid," Rung said. "It matters to you. You, as much as anyone, deserve to feel like you're not alone. That's one of the things stories do for us. They tell us our experiences, our pains, our hopes - that other people feel the way we do. And that's incredibly important and it sounds like you've never gotten that before. There's no chance they'll keep the characters you care about in future shows?"

"They might," Rewind shrugged. "But it's not going to be like this again, will it? They'll be side characters. Or even worse, written poorly. It's ending. I just, I don't know. I want permission to be sad that it's ending."

"You don't need anyone's permission to be sad," Rung said. "But if you want someone's, you have mine. Would you like a hug? Because I would feel very much better if I could give you a hug."

Rewind nodded and Rung slipped out of his chair to wrap the tiny mech in a hug. Nobody on this ship got enough positive touch, in his opinion. His _informed_ opinion. He'd written several tracts on the importance of positive touch and gotten them published back at the beginning of the war. Sure enough, Rewind seemed to relax a bit into the hug. Rung's mind raced, still anxious after all these years that he'd misstep and cause hurtt by trying the wrong approach. "The show can end," he said, "but you know, it won't be _over_. You can't own an idea and you can't stop a story."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure a intersystem entertainment conglomerate has the rights to the idea and they are literally stopping the show, so the story is going to end." Rewind said with a laugh.

"And they can do that. But the thing in your spark isn't the show itself, it's the story. And they can't do anything if you don't let the story end. You can keep it going."

Rewind pulled away and squinted at Rung. "Are you suggesting I violate intergalactic copyright law?"

"I'm suggesting that nobody can stop you from telling your story for yourself," Rung said. "And, practically speaking, the Lost Light is pretty far from any copyright enforcement agency."

"I'm not much of a writer," Rewind said with a frown.

"You don't have to write it down. Just know that they can't kill the idea, because the part of it that lives in you is going to keep going."

Rewind finally hugged him back. "Thanks, Rung. I don't feel better, really, but I think I feel less awful."

"Sometimes talking helps." He smiled. "Thank you for confiding in me, Rewind. I'm glad I could be there for you."

They worked on the puzzle for a bit in silence and managed to solve it together. Rewind somehow moved the conversation back to Rung's collection of romances and they ended up laughing over Rewind's attempted dramatic reading of a few pages from one of Rung's favorites. When Skids showed up for his appointment he seemed surprised to find Rung still deep in conversation, trying to explain the exact appeal of 'Lost Love Under the Tetrahexian Ruins'. Rewind made his escape with a wave and a thoughtful focus in his optics.

 

* * *

 

 

Five weeks later, Rung received a data transmission over his datapad. When he opened it up, he found a short story whose characters’ names he remembered from a quick web search he’d made the day he’d talked with Rewind. There was no author attribution at the beginning, but there was an author’s note.

_For Rung_

_I started with a romance so I could share this with you_

_Because the story doesn’t die until you let it_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments so feel free to tell me anything. You can also find me on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), talking 'bout robots & caring too much

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Shelved](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16604126) by [not_whelmed_yet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet)




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